Four short links: 20 January 2011

Ajax Code Editor — MPL/GPL/LGPL-licensed Javascript code editor that can be embedded into web sites. This used to be Mozilla Skywriter which used to be Mozilla Bespin. (via Mozilla Labs blog)

Sun A Year After: The Open Source Projects — roundup of what happened to Sun’s open source projects after the Oracle acquisition. It’s like the plague struck: some are dead, some are dying, some are fearful, others plough on resolutely.

MIT Open Courseware Supports Independent Learners — they’ve taken some popular classes and made sure the material stands alone, by writing new material to replace references to closed/offline/etc. textbooks. OCW Scholar is not a distance-learning program, but rather educational materials provided for free without the support of an instructor or teaching assistant. The trade-off for this content-based approach without interaction is that OCW Scholar can be used by a very large audience for only the cost of digital distribution. How long until cheap teaching universities spring up, offering the MIT courseware with on-site TAs?